I think one of the most shocking facts I have learned as I’ve educated myself on how money works is that banks create new money out of thin air. I knew that the government could do this but I didn’t know private banks could do this. When you buy a home with a mortgage and the bank pays the seller, that money is created out of nothing - it isn’t a matter of the bank taking other peoples deposits and using that to fund the mortgage. Think about that, private banks can just print money and then profit off the interest. And if they get in trouble because the mortgage payments start failing, they just transfer that debt to the public through a government bail out.